








AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 



THE SURROUNDINGS AND SITE OF 
RALEIGH'S COLONY. 



TALOOTT WILLIAMS, 

OP PHILADEiSPHIA, pa. 



(From the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1695, pages 47-61.) 



I 



WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
1806. 




AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 



THE SURROUNDINGS AND SITE OF 
RALEIGH'S COLONY. 



TALCOTT WILLIAMS, 

OF PHILADELPHIA, PA. 



(From the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1895, pages 47-fil.) 



WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 

1896. 



Y 22^ 

."Wn2- 



By Tranatof. 

MAY 17 1910 



THE SURROUNDINGS AND SITE OF RALEIGH'S COLONY. 



By Talcott Williams. 



A strange Nemesis has attended every original site of coloni- 
zation on the North American continent. Not one has waxed 
great and prospered. Most stand to-day desolate. Plymouth 
is but a village. The island which the Dutch first occupied 
below Albany is as empty of men as when the first blockhouse 
was built upon it. Jamestown is an open field. First and 
earliest of all, the scene of Ealeigh's colony, Roanoke Island, 
has to-day a population probably not much larger than when 
it was discovered, and the site of the colony itself has held no 
dwelling for three centuries. 

The occupation of civilized man has left its visible mark and 
change on most of our coast, but the shores of the two great 
sounds of North Carolina, Albemarle and Pamlico, and the 
various islands which separate them from the ocean — the 
waters Avhich first received English keels and the lands which 
were first occupied by English-speaking men — are to-day, for 
leagues together, as they were first seen. Nothing has altered. 
The long, low island, pictured by De Bry from White's draw- 
ing is still a better sketch of Eoanoke than any published 
since — far superior to the somewhat ridiculous print repeated 
in school histories from a modern magazine. 1 The rows of 
white swan still rise at a shot as they rose at the report of 
Barlowe's arquebus. The flat line of the horizon, the amazing 
luxuriance of vegetation (1,800 species in a single pocoson' 2 ), 
the wilderness of bird life, the wine-colored waters of Albe- 
marle, the shifting shoals which connect it with Pamlico, the 
tempestuous ocean without and the calm sounds within — these 
all still repeat in minute detail the narratives of Lane, of 
Hariot, of Amadas and of Barlowe, and the sketches of John 
White. 

'Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 20:730 (May, 1860), "Louugings in the 
footprints of the pioneers," by Edward C. Bruce. 

2 Goldthwaite's Geographical Magazine, 11:373 (May, 1892), "Physiog- 
raphy of a pocoson," by Charles Hallock. 

47 



48 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

This permanence of physical conditions, untouched and 
unchanged by man, lends a singular interest to this forgotten 
corner of the continent aud sheds a special illumination on the 
narratives of the expeditions which we owe chiefly to the care 
of Hakluyt. History the colony of Raleigh has had in abun- 
dant measure, particularly in the last decade, the last and 
fullest account having been read before the American Historical 
Association by Dr. Stephen Beauregard Weeks at its meeting 
in December, 1890. 1 Into the narrative of the colony which 
begins with the voyage of Amadas and Barlowe in 1584 2 , ends 
with the return of White in 1590, and is prolonged by the 
search for the colony in 1602, 1008, and 1010, I do not propose 
to enter ; but I have twice devoted the scanty recreation of a 
journalist to a visit and examination of the site, once in No- 
vember, 1887, and again in November and December of this 
year ; I have sailed over the waters of the region in an open boat 
from Edenton to Hatteras and I have given the physical con- 
ditions of the region and the j)resent state of its remains a 
direct and practical examination with sail, lead, and spade, 
supplemented by a study of the physiography of the region 
which may, I trust, collectively throw light on the written record. 
For it can not be too often repeated or too well remembered 
that the current of history flows in channels furnished by the 
earth's surface and that every narrative, however full, however 
accurate, however near, and however remote, needs for its fall 
comprehension the study of the region in which its events took 
place, its institutions were formed, its greater figures produced, 
and its battles decided. Without this background and foun- 
dation, history is but a succession of shadowy and shifting- 
scenes " whose worth's unknown although their height be 
taken." 

1 American Historical Association V : 107. The Lost Colony of Roanoke : 
Its Fate and Survival by Prof. Stephen Beauregard Weeks. 1 ( Magazine of 
Am. History, 29 : 459 May-June, 1893. Raleigh's New Fort in Virginia, 1585, 
by Edward Graham Daves.) (New England Magazine, N. S., 11:565, Jan- 
uary, 1895. Raleigh's Lost Colony, by James Phinney Baxter.) (Canadian 
Magazine, 4:500, April, 1895, Lost Colony of Roanoke, by E. Y. Wilson. 

2 Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe sailed in 1584, and discovered 
Roanoke and the Carolina sounds. Sir Ricbard Grenville in 1585 lauded 
over 100 persons on tbe island who were brought back by Drake in 1586. 
In the same year Sir Richard Grenville left 15 persons on the island who 
were all slain by the Indians. Raleigh's second colony, 117 souls, went out 
in 1587, and settled at Roanoke. When tbe island was visited in 1500 by 
Ralph Lane, their governor, all had disappeared, and it is about the 
deserted site that there centers tbe interest which still attaches to Roanoke 
and the first English colony on this coutinent. 



SURROUNDINGS AND SITE OF RALEIGH'S COLONY. 49 

The long* rampart of sandy islands which shut in the two 
sounds of .North Carolina, between which lies the island of 
Itoauoke, constitutes, taken together, the physical feature on 
the Atlantic Coast, whose conditions have changed less and 
whose hydrography has altered more than any stretch as long- 
on the continent. Now, as then, two rivers, the Roanoke and 
the Neuse, and numerous lesser streams, pour their waters 
into these shallow sounds. 1 Now, as then triple forces, the 
(iulf Stream, the prevailing northeast and southwest winds, 
and these rivers, heap these sand-bars and fill with silt the 
space behind them. But while this process, in progress from 
the earliest days of the current emergence of the coast along 
the line of the Cincinnati upheaval, produces the same condi- 
tions and leaves the same general outline of coast and the 
same low horizon of sand-dune swamp and wooded islands, 
the outlines of the coast steadily alter .as land and sand en- 
croach on the sea. Nowhere else are general outlines more 
permanent. Nowhere else are specific boundaries and physical 
features more transitory. Much ingenuity has been expended, 
particularly by those who have never visited the region, in 
determining the exact course followed by the voyagers of three 
centuries ago ; but as it is morally certain that no one of the 
inlets now open was open then, with possibly a dubious excep- 
tion at the southern end in Ocracoke — if this was Wokokok — 
the attempt to decide this question absolutely is a fruitless 
labor. The utmost which can be done is to reach approximate 
conclusions. 

In our own brief day, Hatteras — opened in 1840; in 1860 the 
accepted gateway of the entire system of sounds — has begun 
to close, and can no longer be entered even by schooners of 
moderate size. Without the coast, off Hatteras, Diamond 
Shoals alter so rapidly that their rapid changes have thus 
far baffled the most astute and experienced of light- house 
builders and submarine engineers, Capt. John F. Anderson, 
who, in 1892, lost some $100,000, by the destruction of his 
caisson, to learn that the soundings of one year on this tem- 
pestuous elbow of the continent are all altered by the storms 
of the next winter. Steadily the winds carry the sands grind- 
ing along the coast from Cape Cod to Florida, until the char- 
acteristic detritus of the New England coast can be traced a 



'The area, of these streams is: Nens<- 5,299 and Roanoke 0,237 square 
miles. Tbe area of the sounds is approximately 3,500 square miles. 
H. Doc. 2dl 1 



50 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

thousand miles south; steadily the ocean currents and storms 
together dig breaches in the sandy rampart, and as steadily 
are they filled by the southward march of sand and the out- 
ward flow of fluviatile deposits; but in no ten years together 
do these varying conditions produce exactly the same result 
in bar, inlet, and channel. When it is once clearly understood 
that inlets have been and still are opening and closing, like 
doors on a hotel corridor, along the entire line of this coast for 
three centuries, it will be seen what a fruitless labor it is to 
endeavor to determine by exactly which inlet Amadas, Bar- 
lowe, and their successors entered by applying the uncertain 
record of the successive navigators from 1584 to 1590 to our 
still more uncertain knowledge of the region then and 
our none too certain acquaintance with it now. Very nearly 
every inlet 1 now upon our maps has been credited with furnish- 
ing an entrance to the voyagers during the period, now 
approaching two centuries, in which the subject has been 
under active discussion. But of the ten inlets which have 
been open at intervals into these sounds since 1580, only one, 
Ocracoke, has been open through that period, and it is not 
improbable that this was closed during part of the seventeenth 
century from a reference made to its navigation. 2 

1 The creation of the beaches and tidal marshes of the Atlantic Coast has 
been luminously discussed by Prof. Nathaniel Southgate Shaler. (Report 
United States Geological Survey, X, 147, and in National Geographic Mon- 
ographs, I, 137-168.) 

2 Beginning at the north the varying authorities are: Byrd, opposite 
Collidon Island, now Collington Island; Welsh and Weeks, Caffeys Inlet; 
Hawks and Dover, New Inlet; Ruffin, Roanoke Inlet; Bancroft, Abert, and 
Moore, Ocracoke, identified with Wokokok. Of these the last appear to 
me the least and the first the most probable. The three principal dis- 
cussions of the physiography of this region in connection with this subject 
are: 

Bulletin of the Essex Institute, XVII, Nos, 1-3. An account of the cut- 
ting through of Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina, September 7, 1816; also 
through which inlet did the English adventurers of 1584 enter the sounds 
of North Carolina, and some changes in the coast line since their time, by 
William L. Welsh. 

Appendix G of the Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers for 1876, 
being annual report upon the improvement of rivers and harbors in the 
District of Columbia, Virginia, and North Carolina, in charge of S.T. Abert, 
United States civil engineer. 

Ex. Doc. H. R., Forty-first Congress, third session (January 18, 1871), 
Engineers' Report on Certain Rivers and Harbors, contains, pp. 52-59, 
report of J. H. Simpson, colonel engineers and brevet brigadier-general, 
United States Army, on Roanoke Inlet and its proposed reopening. 

Mr. Welsh's contribution, while brief, is the most importantof all, because 
it was the first to grasp the fact of frequent changes and to note that " Hat- 
arask" and " Hatteras" are miles apart. Mr. Abert's report is the fullest 



SURROUNDINGS AND SITE OF RALEIGH'S COLONY 51 

While a specmc determination of all the places and inlets 
mentioned in these early itineraries is now impossible, a gen- 
eral comprehension of the coast as they found it is as important 
and perhaps more instructive. To-day there is no entrance to 
the sounds north of Oregon Inlet, fast filling-, and there will 
soon be none above Ocracoke, at present the only practicable 
ship channel. Both sounds have made considerable progress 
toward their ultimate destiny of land-locked waters slowly fill- 
ing up to the condition of the Dismal Swamp, or, better, drained 
and turned into fertile lands. In Byrd's time the most north- 
ern arm of these sounds, Currituck, 1 could be entered by vessels 



and most satisfactory discussion of the physical condition of the region, 
moved by the not unnatural circumstance that he was a better engineer 
than historian, and failed to note past changes while studying the current 
situation. Colonel Simpson's paper summarizes the physical history of the 
region immediately about and opposite Roanoke Island. His conclusion 
that the voyagers could not have entered at Roanoke Inlet (now Nags 
Head) is probably 7 accurate, but this omits the still more important fact 
that an inlet undoubtedly existed just above Nags Head by which they 
did in all probability enter. 

Nearly every historian of North Carolina has made an attempt to answer 
the geographical questions involved in the accounts of these voyages, most 
of them by resorting to the charts of their own day, with little comprehen- 
sion of the physical history of the region, its unceasing change, and its 
early 7 condition. The first indispensable apparatus for the study of this 
problem are the early narratives, the charts of White and Hariot, and the 
Coast Survey charts of the region. The gap between the outline of 1586 
and the coast as it is to-day can only be filled by a careful study of inter- 
vening charts, nearly every one of which throws some light on the problem. 
These consist of three classes — the outline sketches of early navigators 
exteudiug over the first century, colonial surveys over the next century, 
and modern charts over the past one hundred years. The first have become 
familiar in facsimile, and it is unnecessary to specify them. Exact knowl- 
edge begins with the accounts and maps of John Lawson, surveyor-general, 
1708, and William Byrd, of Westover. Wimbler, 1730, republished by act 
of Parliament, and Emanuel $owen, 1763, are the most important of the 
colonial charts. Modern surveys and charts may be fairly said to begin 
with Daniel Dunbibin, 1764. This was superseded by the State surveys 
made with a view to a canal in the early years of the century. (Murphey, 
1816, and Hamilton Fuller, 1818; North American Review, January, 1821.) 
The reports of army engineers begin with that of Col. W. K Armistead, 
December 15, 1820, and come down to the present time. The Coast Survey 
charts cover the last half century, and their comparison is important. 

'Currituck Inlet was closed in 1828 (Ruffin, 116), but countless maps 
still carry it, and even the "Map of the United States and Territories," 
1882, issued by the Land Office, has the familiar gap for Currituck Inlet. 
There is probably nothing so lasting as a geographical error, except a 
fictitious historical anecdote. 



52 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

drawing 10 feet, and there was a succession of inlets along the 
coast. Earlier the number of inlets was still greater. The bear- 
ings of the Long Shoal indicate its early existence under condi- 
tions similar to those which now create the Diamond Shoal. 

The general coast line has probably been traveling to the 
eastward, working out under aeriel and aquatic influences, mod- 
ified by tbe slow secular change which once elevated and is 
now probably depressing the entire region. During the cen- 
tury in which we have definite information we know that the 
inlets have been closing from north to south, and the waters 
just inside of the bars steadily shoaling. The first maps show 
scattered and not continuous islands. 1 Even White's map, 
which is extraordinarily accurate, shows the inclosing islands 
wider and the inlets broader than to-day. 

It is not improbable that in 1654 there were a series of 
islands of considerable size, separated by inlets, which, at 
Trinity Harbor, just north of Eoauoke, gave a broad entrance 
and an anchorage safe from any but southeast winds, and 
represented now by the fresh-water lakes north of Nags 
Head, the channels about Collington Island, and the remains 
and memory of Caffeys Inlet, closed in 1800, and Eoanoke, 
closed in 1806. In all the maps of the middle of the last cen- 
tury there were not one but two inlets here, or one divided by 
an island, giving wider and easier access than at any other 
point. 2 In addition, while the inlets below and near Cape Hat- 
teras are shut off from ocean approach by shoals extending 
far to sea, of which early mention is made, 3 these shoals dis- 
appear north of the turn of the cape. Once inside Ocracoke, 
also, while there is a broad stretch of water apparent, the 
expanse is shallow, the channel through the swash inside is 
not to be readily found, and this passed, the work of finding 
a way even for a pinnace from the south to Eoanoke Island 
would not be easy. Inside and outside, therefore, the advan- 
tages of navigation are all in favor of an entrance north of 
Eoanoke and against an entrance below. 

1 This is particularly true of a map of 1666 (Winsor, v, 338), Mordeu, 
1687, and Powers, 1763, and John Mitchell, 1755, give the same impression. 
At the latter date Hatteras Island was six or seven times larger than to-day. 

"This is true of Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, 1755; Robert de Van- 
goudy, 1755; Emanuel Powers, 1763; William Faden, 1793, and the map 
with Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Virginia. 

y Pedro Meuendez, Morquez, 1573. 



SURROUNDINGS AND SITE OP RALEIGH'S COLONY. 53 

I doubt if anyone could go over the coast without and 
within and not reach the conclusion that the most probable 
landfall of the first navigators drawing up from the south 
would be the shoals which make off from Capes Fear and 
Hatteras, and that these would hold them too far away to make 
any inlet until they reached the distinct break in the coast 
line marked and given the name, with good reason, as Trinity 
Harbor on the coast, and that this lay at a point cut by various 
inlets, of which Oregon, far to the south of the old opening, is 
to-day the solitary representative, but which then was in the 
condition whose traces are now apparent in the region just 
described. To Mr. W. L. Welsh must be given credit for call- 
ing attention to this point first named by William Byrd. 1 

The crucial argument in favor of entrance north of Eoanoke 
is that the island is always approached from this direction. 
It was at the ''north end thereof" that Barlowe found " a vil- 
lage of nine houses." If he had approached from the south 
he would have noted the other Indian village, whose remains 
are to-day abundantly visible on the island back of Round 
Ten Oak Island. It was "round about the north point of the 
island" that Ralph Lane sought his colony. Moreover, the 
upper end of this entrance was 35 miles (7 leagues) from 
Roanoke Island. Oollington, then of larger size, furnishes the 
first island of Amadas and Barlowe. Approached from the sea 
it would seem the mainland, and on it the tradition repeated by 
Byrd places the scene of taking possession of the land. More- 
over, starting from this point, with the prevalent wind of the 
region, it would be easy to run to the mainland "20 miles'' 
away, the Alligator River, Occam, nearer here than Roanoke, 
and from thence to seek Roanoke. Coining from the south, 
Roanoke would be almost certainly the first landing made in 
the Sound. "Kendrick's Mounts" are, in all probability, the 
conspicuous sand hills near ISTags Head, the highest on the 
coast, 100 feet high, and to day marked objects and fronting 
dangerous shoals. Nor must it be forgotten that while in this 
century and in the last half of the eighteenth the inlets of 
Pamlico Sound have been the chief channels of commerce, in 
the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth 



'"Not far from Roanoke Inlet. They ventured ashore near tfaat place 

upon an island now called Colleton, where they set up the arms of Eng- 
land." (William JJyrd, Notes, p. 12.) 



54 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

Albemarle was the more accessible sheet of water. The balance 
of evidence of record, of tradition, and of physical conditions 
is therefore all in favor of an entrance at some inlet, which 
even in Byrd's time had disappeared, north of Roanoke Island 
and not far from Colliugton Island. 

This approach decided the point at which the two colonies 
planted by Raleigh were established on the higher ground at 
the northern end of the island, where a low, quadrangular 
mound has been identified since 1654 as its site. This island, 
which is now 1_! miles by 3 and was three centuries ago 16 
miles long and a half mile or more wide, is entered at the 
northwest, on the side toward Croatau Sound, by the Alder 
Branch below Weirs Point, and on the eastern face by Shallow 
Bag Bay, on which now stands the little village of Manteo, 
and about which Daniel Baum and other early settlers lived 
when the island was reoccupied. This harbor is the natural 
site for a settlement on the island. If another was earlier 
selected, it was for reasons due to the approach and the site 
of existing Indian villages. Indian remains are numerous on 
Roanoke Island and their careful study would probably do 
much to solve two important problems, the advance of the 
early red man along the coast and the first contact of his last 
descendants with the white man. 

Four recent Indian village sites w^re examined by me, one 
at the southern end, where extensive shell mounds have been 
reduced in extent by their use as an easy fertilizer, but on 
which a clearly marked mound, 600 by 200 feet in size, fronts 
on an old canal or waterway cut through the swamp for a 
mile. Another extensive Indian deposit is on Baums Point, 1 
most of which has been eaten away by the encroachment of 
the sound on the island, which a few years ago, about 1870 to 
1S75, laid bare a number of Indian skeletons. 

Opposite this point, across the mouth of Shallow Bag Bay, 
is Ballast Point. Off this marshy projection is a mass of 
stones under from 3 to 4 feet of water, covering a space about 



'This is the point now known as Dolhys Point, on which Martin (1: 35) 
places "the stump of a live oak said to have been the tree on which this 
word (Croaton) was cut, was shown as late as the year 1778 by the people 
of Roanoke Island. It stood at the distance of about 6 yards from the 
shore of Shalon-bas-bay, on the land then owned by Daniel Baum. This 
bay is formed by Ballast Point and Baums Point." Baum's descendant, 
Mr. B. F. Meekiu, now holds the site of the original Baum farm. 



SURROUNDINGS AND SITE OF RALEIGH'S COLONY. 55 

40 by 20 feet. These stones tradition for over a century has 
alleged to be ballast from Baleigh's first two vessels. They 
may possibly have reached this point. I procured a quantity 
of this ballast. It is made up of round and angular stones of 
quartzite, porphyritic rock, and greenstone of a few pounds of 
weight, some cleaved. It looks extremely like the raw mate- 
rial of an Indian workshop for the manufacture of arrowheads 
and stone axes, but I suspend judgment awaiting a competent 
mineralogical determination of the material. 

A third Indian settlement is on the northeastern angle of the 
island, much of which has also been gradually swept away by 
the sound and the shifting sand dunes. The most important 
Indian remains are, however, the mounds on the Alder Branch, 
which stand about 100 yards south of the corduroy bridge, 
thrown over the creek during the war, and part of "Burnside 
avenue." 1 This low, but clearly artificial, mound contains 
closely packed in a sitting posture a great number of skeletons 
so decomposed that no bones can be extracted and only the 
general outlines of the skull vertebrae and femora traced. A 
single trench of several opened, 2£ feet square, showed twelve 
of these skeletons on its four faces. 

White's sketches show that the Indians of the region kept 
their dead in huts, where they were exposed to smoke, as was 
the case in Florida, and it is interesting to have this corrobo- 
rative proof that in addition the bodies were packed closely 
together and heaped about with sand. It is also an interest- 
ing circumstance that the Alder Branch, at an early date and 
one apparently anterior to white occupation, had been cut to a 
straight course and the earth heaped on its southern bank. 
Similar artificial waterways are to be found in east Florida. 
This mound probably marks the neighborhood of the Indian 
village found by Barlowe, as the Alder Branch makes a natural 
boat entrance to anyone approaching as he did from the main- 
land opposite. Besides these surface remains, there are on 
the northeastern shores of the island, where careless denuda- 
tion of forest has set the sand in motion, two earlier horizons 
of Indian occupation, one 8 and the other about lo feet below 



1 This is upon the laud of Charles rvttigrew Meekiu, near the "Indian 
hole," a large artificial cavity, 20 yards across aud 30 feet deep, mentioned 
in deeds for many years and an early landmark. Neither this nor the 
mounds can he due to operations in the war. 



56 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

the present surface, the latter clearly marked and extending 
for a mile or two, with frequent fire pits and pottery fragments 
of the fish-net type. 

When the colonists landed under Grenville and under Lane 
they came from the north, as Barlowe had. They would natu- 
rally enter at the same creek and push their boats up the mile 
or more which it was navigable down to the memory of men 
now living, 1 shipbuilding on a small scale having been carried 
on at its head in the last century, as the oak chips, blocks, etc., 
which can be turned up show, although the stream is now a 
dense marsh of* tall reed. They sought for their new home the 
highest ground on the island, upon which stand such remains 
as are left, a site carefully designated, it may be noted, by White 
by. a mark O, distinct from that used to indicate the Indian 
villages on the island. 

That this was the approach to the colony, and not by Shal- 
low Bag Bay, as the traditional oak tree would have indicated, 
appears from Lane's account of his return to the island. Com- 
ing from the sea side, he first "espied toward the north end of 
the island the light of a great fire." Landing at daybreak, he 
" went through the woods to that part of the island directly 
over against Das am on guepeuk " — that is, the western or Croatan 
Sound side — and "from thence we returned by the water side 
round about the north part of the island until we came to the 
place where I left our colony in 1586," which would be the 
nearest approach from the eastern side of Boanoke Island to 
the existing fort. It was here on the "sandy bank" that he 
found the tree "in the very brow of which were curiously 
carved these fair Roman letters, 0. B. O." From the fort he 
"went along by the water side to the point of the creek," which 
is more likely to be the Alder Branch, half a mile off, than the 
creek of Shallow Bog Bay, 3 miles distant. "Presently," con- 
tinues Lane, "Captain Cooke and I went to the place, which was 
in the end of an old trench, made two years past by Captain 
Amadas." "Two years past" must be a misprint for six years 
past, when Captain Amadas visited the place in 1584; and as 
it is difficult to see what digging he coald have done on his 
flying visit, it does not appear a forced construction to take 
"made" in the seafaring sense of "found," and the "old 
trench," the canalled stream of which I have already spoken. 



1 1 owe much in these details to the kindly interest and the local knowl- 
edge of Mr. Walter Dough, long the owner of the fort site. 



SURROUNDINGS AND SITE OF RALEIGH'S COLONY. 57 

Into the details of Lane's melancholy visit, whose pathos 
must have touched every reader, I do not enter, because I 
propose to confine myself to the topographical aspects of the 
history. On the site itself, while the colonists were "left in 
sundry houses" originally built by Grenville's colonists, Lane 
found "the houses taken down and the place very strongly 
inclosed with a high j)alisade of great trees, with curtains and 
Hankers very fortlike." It is this for which the low, square 
mound, still preserved, now stands. Few sites are better 
established by tradition. In 1654 Travis Yardley records the 
visit of "a trader for beavers," in September, 1653, to Koanoke 
Island, where he was shown "the ruins of Sir Walter Baleigh's 
fort" by friendly Indians. 1 The island was bought from the 
Indians by Yardley, and in 1676 became the property of a 
New Englander. A gap of a century leaves it without record. 
The local tradition runs back clearly authenticated to the 
middle of the last century, and there were then living those 
who could by one or two removes have heard the Indian tra- 
dition noted by Yardley. 

When I visited the site in November, 1887, I could find no 
record of any description since that made in 1860 by Mr. 
Edward 0. Bruce, to whose article allusion has already been 
made. Judging from his account, it has seen few changes in 
thirty-five years, though all the brick and mortar he mentions 
is gone. It is a quadrangular embankment whose angles lie 
due north and south and east and west, so that the faces front 
southeast, northeast, northwest, and southwest. The mound, 
which is perfectly clear around the entire inclosure, is 2 feet 4 
inches high above the ditch at its most prominent point. The 
eastern angle has a slope of 23 feet on the angles and about 15 
feet on the curtains, and is broken by what was apparently a 
sally port crossing the southwest angle, the one turned toward 
the creek already mentioned. The four faces measure: The 
southeastern, S4.3 feet; the southwestern, 77.6 feet; the north- 
western, 63.3 feet, and the northeastern, 73.9 feet. As the 
mound is irregular, these measurements are necessarily ap- 
proximate. By measuring from points on the irregular slope 
farther in or farther out, different dimensions would be secured, 
but it was probably originally a square of 25 yards. 

The eastern angle is a right angle, without any signs of a 
bastion whatever. Each face is broken by an angle about 15 



1 North Carolina Colonial Records, 1 : 18. 



58 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

to 18 feet across and projecting from the embankment line 
about 5 to 7 feet. The southern, western, and northern angles 
are bastioned. These may have anticipated the pentagonal 
bastion of a century later ; but this is extremely improbable 
of Elizabethan fort builders, more familiar with the earlier 
roundel, better suited for the trajectory and angle of the pro- 
jectiles of the period. 

There is nothing in the bastions themselves to show that 
they were pentagons, unless one reads into them a preconcep- 
tion based on our familiarity with this form. The interior is 
nearly on a level with the embankment, but at points slightly 
lower. The oak mentioned by Mr. Bruce still stands, though 
aging. The other trees are more recent, and none are of any 
great age. 

The most serious challenge which must be addressed to this 
ancient relic is its size. An area of 625 square yards is scant 
space for over 100 souls who composed the beleaguered colony 
for which it was built. As the houses had been taken down, 
it was their only dwelling, and while it is not impossible that 
it would hold them in leaguer, one would expect the fort would 
be larger. It is also rigorously fair to add that the remains 
have the look, slope, and appearance of smaller Indian mounds, 
some of which are quadrangular and are laid with reference to 
the four cardinal points. If this embankment were in an In- 
dian mound region, with no other history, it would probably be 
given this origin ; but with the chain of evidence which exists, 
broken though it be by the gap of a hundred years, there 
appears to be no reason for challenging its assigned source. 

So far as is known, the surface has been disturbed only once 
prior to the excavations just conducted. During the occupa- 
tion of the island by Federal soldiers in 1863 holes were dug 
in the embankment at the eastern angle and on the south- 
eastern face. On complaint by Mr. Walter Dough, who then 
owned the fort, the vandalism was promptly checked and the 
fort placed under military guard. It was probably at this 
time that the hatchet mentioned by Mr. Weeks in his paper 
was found. With the exception of the Indian pottery and 
the small iron fragments just discovered, this is the only object 
yet found in the inclosure. 

As a careful examination of the site seemed desirable, I made 
application to its present owner, the Roanoke Memorial Asso- 
ciation, and from its president, Maj. Graham Daves, and its 



SURROUNDINGS AND SITE OF RALEIGH'S COLONY. 59 

secretary, Dr. J. B. Bassett received prompt arid cordial x>er- 
missiou to conduct excavations. I was careful to avoid any 
disturbance of the embankment and its slope, tlie surface dis- 
turbed was carefully returned to its original condition, the 
site of each trench was carefully plotted and fixed by bearings 
and measurements, and a minute record kept and deposited 
with the association, so that no injury would be done to the 
site and no embarrassment caused to any future explorer by 
his inability to know where the soil was disturbed. In. all, 
13 trenches, most of them 5 by 3 feet, were opened and carried 
from 4 to 9 feet deep. 

Water, it may be premised, is reached at 15 feet, and undis- 
turbed sand at about 4 feet. Wherever trenches were sunk, 
and, it is fair to conclude, over the entire area, there was found 
a thin and undisturbed layer of sandy humus of 6 to 8 inches to 
a foot, then a layer of black, ashy earth, containing many frag- 
ments of charcoal and frequent fire pits. This layer rested 
directly on undisturbed sand, often penetrated by fire pits. 
If we imagine a forest surface from which the original humus 
had been removed to make an embankment, laying bare the 
sand below, this site occupied for a season and then for three 
centuries left to gather humus again, the condition revealed 
would be created. Toward the base of the black, ashy layer 
were found small pieces of iron, a corroded nail, a chipped 
piece of quartzite, and some small fragments of Indian pottery, 
networked. No one could reasonably expect to find any 
objects of importance on a site ransacked as this must have 
been, but I confess my surprise at the absence of small frag- 
ments, particularly of pottery. For a site occupied as it was, 
the place proved singularly barren of debris. Like its size, 
this circumstance has no ready explanation. The trenches 
opened were dug in three angles, the eastern, northern, and 
western — the southern being too much occupied by trees — 
across the center in two of the flanking bastions, and at other 
points where the surface was either above or below the normal 
level. 

In addition, the embankment was sounded with an iron rod 
for a depth of from 3 to 4 feet at intervals of from 10 to 20 feet 
around the inclosure. The embankment may have had logs 
in it which have wholly decayed, but the indications were 
that it was heaped sand, the dark ashy layer curving over 
its slopes. Excavations were also made in the ditch and at 



60 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

various poiuts in the woods, showing there an undisturbed 
surface and no remains of a layer of coal and ashes below the 
surface. The most plausible deduction which can be made 
from these sparse results is that the site was occupied at 
an early period by those using iron, succeeded by many years 
in which the forest did its natural work of making soil. As 
a corroboration of the tradition in regard to the site, this 
conclusion is important. In any other view the fruits were 
meager ; but the fortune of excavation — of all pursuits of chance 
the most baffling and the most absorbing — may richly reward 
some successor with more time than the brief days I could 
devote. It is at least a profound satisfaction, for which I am 
most grateful to the officers of the association, to have had the 
jmvilege of devoting a short vacation to increasing the scanty 
knowledge previously recorded in regard to the earliest site 
associated with the history of men of our race and tongue on 
this continent. 

The site, as already remarked, is now the property of the 
Roanoke Colony Memorial Association. With this last chap- 
ter in its history, there rests the same melancholy associations 
as with all before, the founder of the association, Edward 
Graham Daves, late of Johns Hopkins University, having died 
within a year of its organization. In November, 1887, after 
my first visit to the site, when I made a compass survey of 
the mound and a hurried investigation of its surroundings, I 
stopped at Johns Hopkins University on my return, where my 
account of the remarkable preservation of the old fort excited 
the interest of both Dr. Herbert Baxter Adams, the secretary 
of the American Historical Association, and of Dr. Daves. 

The possibility of purchasing the site was discussed at the 
time, but no active steps were taken until March 25, 1893, when 
a call l for enough money to buy the fort and a farm of 250 acres 
on the northern end of the island was issued by Dr. Daves, a 
native of eastern North Carolina, to whose j>ersonal enthusi- 
asm as an historical student was altogether due the acquisi- 
tion of the site, the organization of the association, and the 
preservation by it of the earliest English remains on the con- 
tinent. The modest sum needed, $1,250, was raised before the 
end of the year, a large portion being the returns of author's 

'This call was signed by Edward Graham Daves, Francis White, Wil- 
liam Shepard Bryan, A. Marshall Elliott, Bartlett S. Johnston, and Thomas 
J. Boykin. 



SURROUNDINGS AND SITE OP RALEIGH'S COLONY. 61 

readings by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell of his poem, " Francis Drake," 
at Bar Harbor, Baltimore, Philadelphia, the residence of Mr. 
Frank Thomson at Marion, Pa., and elsewhere. May 22, 1893, 
the Boanoke Colony Memorial Association was organized at 
Baltimore, and the first meeting- of its stockholders was held 
at Raleigh October 23, 1894, a second meeting having been held 
last October. The present officers of the association are : Presi- 
dent, Maj. Graham Daves, of Kewbern; vice-president, Mr. 
W.D. Prndeu, Edenton, S. C, and secretary and treasurer, Dr! 
John Spencer Bassett, of Trinity College, Durham, M". C. The 
association now owns the site, with 10 acres, and a farm of 230 
acres covering the northern end of the island. The associa- 
tion proposes to fence and preserve the site, erect a monument 
upon it, and draw public attention to its history. Contribu- 
tions for this purpose are urgently needed. 

With the association and its work, the history of the site 
closes. By little short of a miracle of accident this crumbling 
mound, "child of silence and slow time," has escaped destruc- 
tion. The elements have spared it on an island where the 
merest exposure of the loose, thin soil starts shifting sands rj 
pile dunes and level them. The plow has never passed over its 
low walls and it has escaped the ravages of the relic hunter. 
Even the war found officers who appreciated its value and 
guarded its outlines. A just local pride has shared in its pres- 
ervation, and the first sod turned by English hands in the 
Americas stands to-day after three centuries more clearly 
marked than many a later site and more ambitious structure. 
The low mound, scarce higher than a grave, will rear its round 
outline for long years to come. The beginning of the birth of a 
great people, it is impossible to forget that it was also the sepul- 
cher of the hopes, the fortune, and the future of Walter Baleigh, 
brightest blossom of our English renaissance. About this 
low heap centered once the plans of a kingdom, the promise 
of a principality, and the prospect of enduring fame. 

-the lion and the lizard keep 



The courts where Janishyd gloried and drank deep : 
And Bahrain, that great hunter— the wild ass 
Stamps o'er his head but can not break his sleep." 



\ 



M01 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 444 015 8 



Hollinger 

pH 83 

Mill Run F05-2193 



